Tips and Tricks to Survive Top Lane
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Top lane is a very interesting matchup in the current meta. Sometimes you're left on an island to take care of yourself for the first 15 minutes; other times, you get random, often inexplicable, attention from the junglers. The lane is long, and the current meta heavily favors champions with strong sustain or trading capability (generally in the form of shields). It's a position that has evolved to favor tanky champions with strong initiates or game changing ultimates, and so often plays a vital role in team fights or, alternatively, has the added responsibility of knowing when and how far to split push.
Here are some tips to make your top lane experience a little more pleasant.
START WITH A WARD
DON'T PUSH UNLESS YOU HAVE VISION
LEARN TO FREEZE THE LANE / LEARN HOW TO BREAK FREEZES
RUN A FEW DIFFERENT RUNE PAGESIf you're playing top lane as a primary position, you probably need a few rune pages. Depending on how dedicated to top lane you want to be, anywhere from 2-8 rune pages are needed to have just the right combination for any given match-up. Typically, they will look something like this:
AD Full Tank: Armor pen reds, Flat Armor yellows, Flat MR blues, Move Speed (or possibly health) quints
AP Full Tank: Magic Pen, Flat Armor, Flat MR, Move Speed (or possibly health / AP)
AD vs AP: Armor pen, Flat Health, Flat MR, Move Speed (or AD)
AD vs AD (mana): Armor pen, Flat Armor, Mana regen, Move Speed (or AD)
AD vs AD (no mana): Armor pen, Flat Armor, Scaling MR, Move Speed (or AD)
AP vs AP: Magic pen (or possibly hybrid pen), Flat Health, Flat MR, AP
AP vs AD (mana): Magic pen, Flat Armor, Mana regen, AP
AP vs AD (no mana): Magic pen, Flat Armor, AP, AP
Consider TP over ignite.
Read More: http://themittani.com/features/lol-10-tips-top-lane
Here are some tips to make your top lane experience a little more pleasant.
START WITH A WARD
DON'T PUSH UNLESS YOU HAVE VISION
LEARN TO FREEZE THE LANE / LEARN HOW TO BREAK FREEZES
RUN A FEW DIFFERENT RUNE PAGESIf you're playing top lane as a primary position, you probably need a few rune pages. Depending on how dedicated to top lane you want to be, anywhere from 2-8 rune pages are needed to have just the right combination for any given match-up. Typically, they will look something like this:
AD Full Tank: Armor pen reds, Flat Armor yellows, Flat MR blues, Move Speed (or possibly health) quints
AP Full Tank: Magic Pen, Flat Armor, Flat MR, Move Speed (or possibly health / AP)
AD vs AP: Armor pen, Flat Health, Flat MR, Move Speed (or AD)
AD vs AD (mana): Armor pen, Flat Armor, Mana regen, Move Speed (or AD)
AD vs AD (no mana): Armor pen, Flat Armor, Scaling MR, Move Speed (or AD)
AP vs AP: Magic pen (or possibly hybrid pen), Flat Health, Flat MR, AP
AP vs AD (mana): Magic pen, Flat Armor, Mana regen, AP
AP vs AD (no mana): Magic pen, Flat Armor, AP, AP
Consider TP over ignite.
Read More: http://themittani.com/features/lol-10-tips-top-lane
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- Know match-ups. It's really important for top lane and it only comes with experience
- That said, don't pick champions because x counters z. If you can't play x, don't pick him and play a champion instead that you are familiar with
- Most of the time the first gank happens top lane. If you know you can't win 2vs2 with your jungler, don't push early and play it safe
- A lot of people make the mistake of not pushing the lane top completely to the tower. Use this to your advantage and try to freeze the lane near your tower so can deny him farm and be safe from ganks
- When freezing a lane, don't let it push too hard. Kill just enough creeps so that it barely pushes into your direction or you might die in a dive/gank due to too much creep damage
- When you need to base and you can't push it but it pushes into your direction, just base and it will still push into your direction when you come back. This is better than getting denied by the enemy freezing the lane
- When losing a lane, go tanky. If you build damage and the enemy is smart, he will keep killing you because he will have more damage than you. You won't be useful this way later on as opposed to being a tank that can still help your team
- Don't call or blame the jungler if you are unsure about getting a kill. A fail attempt will just put you even more behind
- If they are 5man grouped to take dragon and you have no TP and can't join them, push the tower and try to trade tower for drake.
Masteries
10 Commandments of a Jungler
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- Don't gank a lane that's completely lost
- Don't gank a lane that doesn't buy a ward on his first back to base.
- Don't gank a lane that pushes but doesnt ward
- Dump the midlaner that doesn't come to help leash
- Always be prepared for enemy jungler to come counter jungling
- Help the lane that is already winning and help them ward their surroundings.
- Help out mid as much as possible, show your face even if you are just passing by.
- Before Level 6, gank top at least once.
- Communicate with your support player on where the enemy wards are.
- Even if you follow all these commandments,losing games are still lost.( there are games nothing can be done about. )
Read more: http://www.nerfplz.com/2013/01/najin-mokuzas-jungle-10-commandments.html#ixzz3GfkvO91e
Tips and Tricks
- 1.) TIME EVERYTHING. There way to many people who simply forget about this, remember the times! Specially the second buff.
- 1a.) Steal second buff in low elo. Junglers suck at timing, stealing their blue is a great way to take advantage of that. Not only that, but you can give your blue to the midlaner, making it snowball faster. (It's usually around 7min)
- 1ab.) When it comes to 7-minute invasion sometimes I just assume they are going to go for my buff so I just go for theirs and save myself the trouble of trying to contest a buff versus a much stronger duelist.
*1c.) If you know the enemy is going to try and defend their blue buff (blue side), this opens up the perfect opportunity for an easy Dragon since you know their mid/jungler will be on the opposite side of the map at a specific time buying you a solid 15-20 seconds.
- 2.) Understand the match up. If you're Amumu and the enemy is Udyr, be prepared for a late invade on your red. He will invade. Understand the weakness of your enemy and exploit it. Don't think just because you got a good invade that you'll be able to easily invade that Elise. Know your matchups.
- 2a.) Mindgame the matchup. When you play Amumu, WW, Sejuani the enemy jungler typically expects you to play the matchup scared-like and this can often be abused.
- 3.) Pay attention to top behavior. If enemy top is always putting your top under the tower and then dissaperas, get a ward in your jungle, or it will be stolen sooner or later. The same is not true for midlaners, mages in general don't have good sustained damage at 7:00. You should worry more about roams than losing a buff in this case.